Social studies was getting stagnant with packetwork meant to establish background knowledge for a Native American simulation. So work before the fun; going against my philosophy. The students kept asking amazing questions to which I replied that maybe later we would study that.
So I decided to do a circle discussion of social studies and the kids asked me if they could please research something of their choice about Native Americans. Sure. They even had ideas for how they would present the info: posters, models, skits, glogsters, research papers - boundless creativity.
So today my room was filled with noise, kids partnering up, books being shared, questions being thrown out and discarded, research being questioned. In short; it was beautiful.
